Matrix:Resurrection
by ThePet
Summary: Prequel to the Matrix series. The creation, death, and resurrection of Agent Smith...


A/N I've had this story in my head for some time.  It's all planned out, but I can't say how often it'll be updated, I have a busy life!  This is s a prequel to the Matrix series, hopefully consistent with the trilogy.       

Disclaimer: I don't own 'The Matrix', only the world inside my head.  I don't own the Agents, the Oracle, or the Architect.  Whatever characters I do own, which is anyone you don't recognise, you're welcome to; only the original characters interest me, my OCs are mere plot-filler.  

Anyway, on with the story! Reviews very much appreciated.

**Prologue**

_Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo._

Rain pouring down onto a cold grey land, blasted and burned, filled with blood both real and metaphorical.  Neo's blood.  His blood.  Real and metaphorical, like this twisted place that is Smith's world.

_    Is it over?_

Brilliant sunshine flooding the valley, green and calm, the sea beyond as startling and bright a blue as his eyes, though they are hidden by dark sunglasses.  A tiny brook trickles along and he idly watches it – to him it is real, though it is also a metaphor for something he barely remembers, something he once knew.  

_   It is done._

Soaked in mud and shivering with creeping horror, sunglasses crushed somewhere in the muck, blood in his mouth, watching in terror with naked eyes as he/Anderson slowly fills with light and explodes into nothing.  Sensing the same hideous feeling coming over him as the others descend into fiery death, as well.  Alpha and Omega.  An end…and a beginning.

**Chapter One**

  John Smith cast one last look over the valley before sighing, and pressing a button on a small hand-held device he had slipped into his pocket.  Immediately the simulation vanished, leaving him standing in a dreary, grey, windowless room, kept at a constant even temperature by machines – how ironic.  Frowning at the small box in his hand – amazing and disturbing to think that the awesome beauty of Laycroft Valley could be held in such a little, innocuous thing – he removed his sunglasses.  This simple device of plastic and metal, which had existed for so many, many decades, was now obsolete.  The glasses he possessed would probably become a collector's item in his lifetime – if his lifetime lasted long enough, of course.  He kept them as a token, a symbol, a reminder of better days; he wore them when he ran his simulation, a fake world where the sun still shone and birds still sang in a clear blue sky.  When he could not have the simulation, he kept the sunglasses in his pocket, and reached for them whenever the world he lived in became too horrible to handle.

  He gripped them now as he headed out of the recreation lounge and for his office on the seventy-fourth floor.  His secretary would be waiting for him with the latest reports, things that had happened during his twenty-minute afternoon break: attacks by squadrons of machines on various government-run buildings, perhaps civilian domiciles as well.  Updates from World Security Headquarters about the latest plans and technology developed for fighting the Machines.  And deaths…lots and lots of deaths.  _Casualties_, his colleagues called them – casualties of war.  Smith would not allow himself to use that word.  They were dead _people_, dead mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, wives and husbands.  Good or bad, soldiers or civilians, racial imperialists or conscientious objectors – they were humans beings lying torn apart in the mire that used to be the world.  Not casualties, not 'losses', not statistics on a computer screen.

  They were people.

  Gritting his teeth, Smith pushed open his office door.  The secretary, a young, outwardly serene man with dark hair and a cool, unsmiling demeanour, sat inside, at Smith's desk, frowning as he cast his eyes over the readout on his computer screen.

  "Well, Brown?" Smith sat down opposite him, and forced himself to appear unconcerned about the answer as he asked, "what's the latest?"

  Brown looked up.  His passionless eyes met Smith's briefly before flicking back to the screen.

  "The usual," he said, in his light, bored voice.  Did he have to be so insipid? "Five attacks while you were away," he made it sound as though Smith had taken a holiday in Barbados while the world was crumbling around them.  "Four on military outposts, one on a civilian hospital in Santa Fe.  We think they were after a scientist called Su Hwan – who is now dead."

  Almost idly, Brown tossed over a mini-comp – a small, A4 sized pad about five centimetres thick, used for holding relatively small amounts of multimedia data.  It currently showed a hologram of a smiling person of indeterminate gender and oriental race.  A scrolling bio revealed that Professor Su Hwan was involved in studying a type of man-made radiation which selectively targeted certain types of mircoelectric circuitry – the type used in most of the Machine's foot soldiers.  Smith stared at the report.

  "Why wasn't he – she? – in a secure military facility?"

  "_She _was deliberately placed in a civilian hospital under a false name in order to prevent the Machines from attacking and destroying…"

  "Yes, yes – it seems not to have worked."

  "It is of no direct concern to us, sir," Brown pointed out, unctuously.  Smith growled at him, but it was half-hearted – his department was overworked and understaffed, and Brown had a point.  Every murdered scientist could not be their concern.  Su Hwan's work was largely academic, anyway – if such a weapon were to be created, it would effectively wipe out both sides of the war.  Humans depended as much on machines as they ever had, even in this new, crazy world where the created turned upon the creators.

  "And so we expel them from the Garden of Eden," Smith murmured, to himself.  Brown raised a thin eyebrow.

  "I beg your pardon, sir?"  
  "I was just reflecting," Smith said aloud, noting that Brown's face fell immediately – the younger man expected another declaiming rant about the foolhardiness of humanity.  "Our recent activities," Smith went on, feeling anger build within him – this was about the only thing that could rouse him, these days, war-weary and exhausted as he was.  "Turning our attacks against the sun.  Cutting them – and us – off from the light which nurtures us."

  "Scorching the sky was an inspired idea," Brown remarked, returning to his perusal of the latest reports.

  "It was foolish," Smith snarled, "and a travesty against nature.  And will only rile the Machines to even more violent retributions.  If we had treated them properly in the first place, instead of like slaves…"

  It was a rhetoric Brown had heard often before, and he was clearly not listening.  Smith gave up, though his heart pounded and his mind was spinning with what-ifs, if-onlys, endless anxieties and regrets.  He sat at his desk, watching Brown impassively scan reports of death and destruction, wondering whether he could have made a difference himself to the outcome of the war, had he been in the right position.  He had been a cop, and a good one – he had lived for his job, and thought it important, crucial even, to the smooth running of society.  But Smith had had his choice of professions; he was intelligent, well-educated, smooth-talking, and from a well-respected family with a background in politics.  Perhaps, had he chosen to become a politician, he could have risen to a position where he might have influenced the decision to attack the sun.  He knew it was wrong; his gut told him so, and instinct for trouble was something his years as a high-ranking police officer had taught him.  

  He had been drafted into the intelligent agency – the new WIA, War Intelligence Agency, which had gradually become more and more decidedly international– just before humanity's so-called final solution.  All the scorching of the sky had achieved had been to make the Machines more determined, more ruthless, more precise and focussed in their attacks, recognising that their time was running out.  They were going to win this war, Smith knew that – how and when were the questions.  Anyone with any _sense _knew that.  Sadly, those with the power appeared not to know.  Always the way; the people who made the decisions were too far away from the problem, up there in their ivory towers, making mad decisions that were going to cost millions of lives.  Smith had come to despise them with a slow-burning hatred he could never feel for the Machines.  He was something of a scholar; he had qualifications in modern history, sociology, and, crucially, AI psychology.  He knew people, and more importantly he knew Machines, to the best extent anyone, any _human_, could.  That was why he had been drafted into this particular intelligence department – they were trying to outthink the Machines, fight them on their own level.

  It was pointless.  Anyone who knew anything about the Machines knew that there was no real hope for humanity in this War.  They could not win; their onlychance was to make peace, reach a compromise.  And with the damage to the sun, cutting the planet off from its warmth and light, there was no longer any possibility of that.  The Machines were logical, rational creatures; they would have accepted peace as preferable to the loss of more lives, but they would not jeopardise their own survival.  If a method could be found by which Machines could survive without the sun – if a human could present it to them…

  Smith spent his time at work trying to think of a way in which the War could be peacefully concluded, but every idea he had was snared up in red tape at head office, bandied about by politicians and so-called experts, torn apart until it became so twisted, diluted, or otherwise deconstructed that it was worthless.

  Watching Brown's pale fingers flickering over his keyboard, Smith wondered helplessly when it was that humans had become so cold and seemingly efficient, while at the same time obsessively reiterating every piece of information until it became useless.  There was something Machinelike about it – except that the Machines had something humans did not: effective communication, the ability to work as a true collective.  That was real efficiency, and real teamwork.

  It was a relief, of a kind, to ride home in the armoured hover-shuttle, through the grey and battered streets beneath the innercity dome in which Smith lived, by necessity.  As always, his stomach clenched as he looked out of the windows onto a torn and dying world, and his light-blue eyes, ringed by dark shadows, peered with a mixture of anxiety and fury out of his pale thin face.  He was a large man, over six feet in height and strongly built, though thin and worn from endless months of poor rations.  His size made him intimidating; the striking, crystalline blue of his eyes only increased the effect.  Lately, those eyes had stared endlessly, abstractedly, into space at both work and home, as Smith contemplated the situation humanity had gotten itself into and whether anything effective – and moral – could be done about it.

  He did not see the blasted streets, cold and grey and unloved, as he sat in the shuttle, alternately philosophising and considering very practical possibilities.  He had seen it all too often to notice – the debris which always littered the pavements and road, the never-ending drift of beggars, thieves, and drunks who stumbled along searching for something the whole species had long since lost.  What Smith did notice, what would never become too familiar to be seen, was the darkness – or twilight, rather.  The lack of pure sunlight; humanity's brilliant plan, to leave the world in a dirty grey darkness before a dawn that would never come.  More than anything – more than proper food, more than recreation, more even than peace – he missed the sunlight.  True, he had never noticed it a great deal when it had been there, blazing down on him every day; sometimes he had even cursed it, on long days in the patrol car, soaked in sweat and longing for a cold beer. 

  He missed the sun falling on the front of his house, brightening it, making the chrome sparkle in the light, and the pitted paint seem less decrepit.  He was at the front door now, waiting patiently the few seconds it took for the retinal scanner to kick in – it was old and in ill-repair – and then he stepped inside, into electric light brighter than outside.  The only light left in the world, this cold, unfeeling, artificial beam.  Everything artificial…

  Except the thoughts in his head – or so he hoped – and his wife, who was sitting on the sofa, crying.

  "Katrina?" he sat down next to her, feeling his stomach tighten.  Had something happened to Joseph? Or Julilla? Or perhaps Katrina's father…he was a cyberneticist, working on a similar project, presumably, to Su Hwang.  Though he felt guilty for it, he prayed it was his father-in-law who was dead and not one of his children.  Afraid to ask, he put his arm around his wife and sat in silence, letting her cry on his shoulder, his guts twisting all the time – where were the kids? The house was silent, no sounds of playing, no laughing or shouting.  It must be one of the kids.  Both? 

  "Katrina, tell me what's happened!" Sharper than he'd intended, his voice shot through with sick apprehension.  His wife sat up, wiping her eyes, mustering the strength to speak.  He waited, resisting the urge to shake her, desperate to know now.

  "John – it's Julilla…"

  "Oh my God," he was on his feet and pacing, unable to stop himself; physical activity was the way he dealt with most negative feelings – anger, fear, guilt, grief.

  "No, no!" Katrina cried suddenly, and he froze, startled.  "Not…not our daughter," she said, in a strained, apologetic voice, and Smith, overwhelmed with relief, collapsed back onto the sofa.

  "Julilla van Reicer," Katrina went on, swallowing.  "I'm sorry, John, I didn't mean to frighten you like that.  The kids are fine, both of them.  But Julie van Reicer was killed in an attack on St. Errol's hospital this morning.  I thought you would know already."

  And so he should have.  Smith cursed himself for not understanding, for upsetting his wife further and showing his own horror like that.  Julilla – usually called Julie – van Reicer was, or rather had been, his wife's best friend since their schooldays, and a close friend of the family.  They had named their daughter after her.

  "Su Hwang," said Smith, quietly.  His wife looked up at him.

  "What was that?"

  "Nothing," he pulled her to him again, wanting to make up for the confusion, to comfort her in her loss.  "I did hear about the hospital, but it was in amongst a lot of other reports – I didn't even notice the name."  This was true; as soon as Brown had said 'civilian hospital' he had filed the report away in his mind with the other many, many deaths of faceless strangers.  They saddened him, but he could not dwell on them – there was no time.  His wife was a nurse at a military hospital; he had not even thought about Julie, also a nurse, at St. Errol's.

  "I'm sorry," he said, feeling oddly responsible.  Could his department have done anything to prevent this attack? Intelligence had foreseen the danger to Su Hwang, and yet had done little, as far as Smith could see, to intervene.  Had the scientist been guarded, had the building been surveyed? He pushed these thoughts away, deciding to conduct a surreptitious enquiry tomorrow – for now he had to focus on his grieving wife.  He made her tea laced with whisky.  He prepared dinner.  He let her talk about Julie, their time together at school, at university, training to be nurses; he listened as she poured out memories, laughed and cried, as millions of other people were doing today.  As she talked of Julia's husband Robert, how devastated he must be, how they had been trying for a baby despite the horrible world into which the kid would be brought, Smith found himself more grateful than ever that so far the war hadn't touched him so personally.  His wife and children were alive, his parents were as safe as it was possible to get.  Compared to most, he was lucky.  He had the luxury of bemoaning humanity's mistakes and cruelty; he was able to feel some sympathy for the Machines because he had not had his life torn apart by them.  He wondered whether Brown, with his blank expressionless face hiding a deep-seated hatred of the Machine races, had lost family or friends to the wars.  Probably.  Almost certainly.  Did his uncaring, callous demeanour protect him from grief too terrible to be born?  Smith was getting a cruel dose of reality, and it shook him – shook him to the core.

  The hover-shuttle drew slowly up to the entrance of WIA headquarters, and Smith wearily climbed the several hundred steps to his floor; the lifts were down again, which meant electronic jamming by Machine agents.  Or possibly, just another malfunction no-one had time to repair.  By the time he reached his office, not only was he breathing heavily, but there was no time to spend his customary ten minutes in the valley simulation before work.

  Besides, Smith needed every bit of the time he'd made by coming in to work two hours early to start his investigation into the attack on St. Errol's hospital.  It would have to be unofficial, and if anyone found out he would be ordered to let it drop, leave it to whoever was responsible for following up the case – if anyone even was.  But Smith had spent all night listening to his wife weeping, comforting her when she finally fell asleep only to be woken screaming by nightmares, and this morning he didn't give a damn about anything but that.

  The most obvious first step was to pull up the file on Su Hwang, and this he did.  Details were scarce; this was the medium security version.  Smith had high security clearance; he entered his passcode and got a fuller version of the file.  Hwang, Su, doctor of cybernetics.  Qualified at Harvard and Yale.  Notable projects mostly involved studying ways in which to disrupt the electrical signals in the brains of Machines without having a similar effect on humans – teasing apart the differences in order to exploit some weakness in Machines that humans didn't have.  Well, it was obvious why the Machines would want her dead…the next step was to find out why Su Hwang had been placed at St. Errol's, if there was a particular reason.

  Smith used his time well, but had found nothing of any special interest by the time Brown arrived, exactly punctual as usual.  

  "You're here early," he said, stating the obvious as unblushingly as ever.

  "I had some paperwork to catch up on," Smith replied, pleasantly, closing the files.  

  "How's the family?" Brown asked, flatly.  Smith stared at him, then said cautiously,

  "Fine.  All fine.  Thank you."

  Brown had never asked about his family before.  For a moment Smith wondered whether Brown might be a spy, planted by his superiors to keep an eye on the dangerous renegade – but he dismissed this as highly unlikely.  Brown was – well, odd, and he might know more than he should about certain things entirely for his own reasons.  Smith decided it would be best not to know what those were.  He said nothing further until Brown had settled himself at his computer – they shared the office - and they both had coffee.  

  "So – what's the latest?" exactly the same as he said every morning.  Nothing different here, nothing wrong.  But something felt different, it _felt_ wrong.  Brown kept shooting him strange glances, not suspicious, almost sad.  Perhaps someone he cared about had been killed.  

  There was nothing unusual in the intelligence reports from overnight; the night staff had left everything in order and dealt with what needed to be dealt with.  Brown worked studiously, reading and filing the endless incoming reports, filtering out the important items to pass to Smith.  They seldom talked as they worked – indeed Smith spent a lot of time away from the office – but today Brown was unusually talkative.  No, not quite that – he seemed to want Smith to talk.  That only increased the likelihood, Smith thought, that Brown was depressed or bereaved and needed company.  

  Their conversation was somewhat erratic, naturally, given that new reports came in every few minutes, but Brown was efficient and managed to combine work with more general discussion.  It was, of course, relevant – their discussion began when Brown encouraged Smith to lay out his latest idea about how peace might be achieved between man and Machine.  Smith, caught up in his own philosophy, grew increasingly irate as he argued against the foolishness and arrogance of his own species.

  "Look at what we are, at how we treat the world around us.  What we did to the sky.  The Machines would never have contemplated anything like that…"

  "Only because they rely on solar power," pointed out Brown, calmly.  "That was after all the point of the operation."

  "They would never have considered it anyway!" Smith growled.  "If there's one thing Machines learned from us, it is how _not_ to treat the world around them.  They at least know how to exist in balance with the environment."

  Brown usually began sighing and frowning by this point, which was the usual reaction of Smith's colleagues to his regular rants.  This time, however, he listened quietly, and seemed more interested than usual.

  "And we do not?" he asked.  

  "Of course not! We've done our damned best to practically destroy the planet – all we do is multiply, take resources, drain a region of everything it's got and move on, always growing in numbers, taking and taking from nature and never giving anything back.  What other animal does that? If that's evolution then something went wrong somewhere.  At some point, we ceased to be high-ranking members of the animal kingdom, living in equilibrium with our environment…we became something else."

  "And what is that?" Brown wondered, looking hard at Smith.

  "_I _don't know," Smith snapped, "I'm not a zoologist, or biologist, or whatever deals with that sort of question.  This isn't something I've studied or gone to seminars about, it's something I feel in my gut."  He paused, rubbed his forehead irritably.  "If we hadn't treated them the way we did and caused this war, the Machines could have done a lot for us."

  Brown looked at him curiously.  "In what way?"

 "They could have taught us something about balance.  They live in harmony with the environment, or they would if we let them – and with each other.  They could have led us in the right direction, I think – cured the disease."

  "You think evolution is a disease?"

  "I think _humanity_ is a disease," growled Smith.

  "And Machines are the cure?" There was an uncomfortable pause, but for the first time, Smith felt he was really connecting with Brown in a way he had never thought possible.  "Please don't let anyone hear you say that," said Brown, quietly.  "Your perspective on the war – on Machines – is unique.  We can't afford to lose it."

  Smith nodded, surprised to find that he had had an ally all this time and never knew it.  They worked in companionable silence, talking of nothing but relevant work matters, until the first shift ended.

  "I'm taking a couple of hours out," Smith said to his colleague.  "I'm going to go home and check up on Katrina.  She was too upset to go in to work today – did I mention a friend of hers was killed at St. Errol's hospital yesterday?" He was no longer afraid of Brown reporting his interest in the case.

  "I'm sorry," said Brown, and he looked it, surprising Smith even further.  Surprise became astonishment when the younger man got up and offered his hand.  "Take care, John."

  "I will," Smith replied, automatically shaking Brown's hand, though thoroughly bewildered.  _He must've lost someone, and now he's expecting death around every corner_.  "You, too," he added.  "I'll see you this afternoon."

  Brown smiled faintly, sat back down, and returned to his computer.  Smith, after casting a puzzled glance back at him, collected his jacket and left to catch the hover-shuttle home.  He did not look back, and therefore, did not see Brown's dark eyes fixed on him, intently, sadly.


End file.
